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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788877">~ Blood Kin ~</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiced_Wine/pseuds/Spiced_Wine'>Spiced_Wine</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Splinters of Steel [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Kinship, Gen, Imladris, M/M, Part of the Dark Prince/Magnificat of the Damned ‘verse, References to M/M, Warrior Friendship, ’in verse references</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:48:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,125</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788877</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiced_Wine/pseuds/Spiced_Wine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tindómion arrives at Imladris with his mother and Glorfindel, he will not swear to serve Elrond, only Glorfindel. </p><p>An ‘in-verse’ one shot. Part of the Dark Prince/Magnificat of the Damned series,</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Splinters of Steel [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778620</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>~ Blood Kin ~</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>

</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b> ~ Blood Kin ~ </b> </p>
</div><p>~ The light struck the valley old-gold, shimmered in the waterfalls, painted frail rainbows through their spray.<br/>
The Bruinen ran clear but low this dry summer and, as the riders approached the Ford, the sentry sent his runner up to the House. He saluted as the horses crossed the shallows and Glorfindel returned it.<br/>
‘Well met, Lagor. All is well?’</p><p>‘Yes, my Lord Captain.’ The warrior’s eyes moved to Tindómion. ‘My Lord,’ he bowed, and there was something more than courtesy in his words. ‘It is good to see thee.’</p><p>Tindómion’s stern face relaxed a little. ‘And thee, Lagor.’</p><p>‘Lady Fanari.’ Lagor bowed to Fanari, who smiled back, then stepped aside as they took the path up through the woods, where the sound of the horses’ hooves fell muffled by the pines. They sighed gently, like a sea-memory, distilled their fragrance through the air.</p><p>The path turned, rose, broke out of the trees and the land lifted itself, so that their way climbed and curved around the shoulders of a cliff. They could hear the sound of waterfalls, gentle now in summer, but in winter, they roared in white spume.</p><p>Then the valley opened before them, across a slender stone bridge that spanned the Bruinen. They crossed in single file, the packhorses coming last. Beyond, across a wide expanse of cobbles rose the walls and houses of Imladris. It was called the Last Homely House, but was in fact a series of interconnected buildings that climbed the steep walls of the valley. Steps and airy, arched walkways linked one to another. It was more like a castle or sprawling mansion than a ‘house’.  Little gardens nestled, bright with flowers, fragrant with herbs; pathways were lined with urns and benches where people might sit.</p><p>Away from the house, the slopes were planted with vineyards, flatter pastures for horses, sheep and goats grazing higher levels. Barley waved feathery heads, ripening to gold. The flax-flowers had long since faded, but in spring created a lake of blue far away.</p><p>A sense of peace lay over Imladris, but not a peace won without cost. There was memory here too, and sorrow. It had been built as a refuge when Sauron’s forces ravaged Eregion and some of that atmosphere lingered, for all its beauty.</p><p>Tindómion paused his horse as the courtyard doors swung open, looking up at the statue. It had not been erected the last time he was here: a Noldor King in full panoply, lifting a great spear. The sculpted face was half hidden by the high-crowned helm, but enough showed of the straight nose, the lovely, modelled mouth and chin, for anyone whom had known the High King  to recognise it. Glorfindel watched as Tindómion stared, refused to look away, and felt, as if it were his own (which it was) the grief like an everlasting emptiness that washed him away day after day, yet never drowned him, only left him gasping, bitter, furious. And, too, Gil-galad’s grave was here...</p><p>At length, Tindómion looked away, met Glorfindel’s eyes. The gates swung open.<br/>
Servants were waiting to take their horses and gear and the housekeeper came to meet them.<br/>
‘Refresh thyselves,’ Glorfindel told them. ‘Tindómion, thou wilt have thine old chambers. Fanari, thine will be close by.’</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> OooOooO</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p>Tindómion stood at the balcony, waiting. Glorfindel paused, looking at him, the straight back, the wide shoulders, the storm of bronze hair bound back in those triple braids that marked his royal blood; for only the heirs to the House of Finwë had the right to wear those three plaits (three to signify the Three Houses of Fëanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin).</p><p>Glorfindel had noted that proclamation of his heritage when first he met Tindómion so long ago, in those days when Lindon was at peace and there had been an illusion of hope. (Before Sauron rose again, bringing war, before Númenor fell, before Kings died on Dagorlad and under the red sky of Mordor) It was Gil-galad himself whom had first woven those braids into Tindómion’s hair, accepting him as cousin, and declaring him a Prince of the Blood.<br/>
<i>I wish...</i> Glorfindel thought, and then foundered on the hard shoals of impossibility. Too many things longed for and lost, gone to fire, to ash. But then Tindómion turned, and there was no ash in his eyes, no ending, only a flame that not even grief could quench. Defiant in the face of loss, of destruction, of all hope.<br/>
Glorfindel’s pulse leaped with heat; he thought of his long, dry years of celibacy, a figurehead in battle, the Valar’s sly-smiling, left-handed offering of hope to the Elves of Middle-earth.</p><p>That self-imposed chastity had ended in a furious clash of will and wildfire with the strange thrall of Sauron, and then came the recent and savage (superb, satisfying) interlude with Tindómion in the Tower of Elostirion. Glorfindel’s desires had been reawakened and would not, ever again, be locked away.</p><p><i>’ I would not damn thee,’</i> he had said out of the firestorm that was Tindómion’s rage and pain and hunger, something so very familiar to him, that was <i>Fëanor.</i> And Tindómion had laughed, fey, uncaring. <i>’I am already damned</i>!’</p><p>And Glorfindel was damned too; his freedom, his rebirth was, he believed and knew in his soul, only temporary. The Valar still meant him to pay for his sins. Their sword hung poised over his head.</p><p><i> And so, we will be damned together</i>!</p><p>It was not love. Glorfindel had never truly known the kind of love the harpers sang of, but there were some things that ran as deep, or deeper: the passion of the blood, kinship, respect, the pure and uncomplicated lust of a warrior after the white heat of battle that scorned tenderness or promises. It was, he realised exactly what he needed and wanted. Now, he no longer felt so adrift, cast up upon a lonely shore, his own world and the titans that had peopled it gone.<br/>
Elrond would turn a blind eye to such things, if they were discrete. Discretion had crippled Tindómion, almost driven him mad, and Gil-galadriel too, Glorfindel had been forced to witness it. To the Hells with it. He would abide by the unspoken rules, but never would he hide what he was. Even Turgon had, perforce, to accept it.</p><p> </p><p>Tindómion wore deep-green edged with gold and a circlet of nobility on his brow. The centre-stone was, aptly, a fire-opal. He might have walked out of the palace of Tiriron save the eyes of the Eldar then had not carried such weight, such sorrow, and never so much fire. <i>Not until Fëanor ignited it.</i></p><p>Tindómion’s hand dropped to his waist. It was not the custom in Imladris to go armed, saved for the soldiery, but a dagger hilt rose from his hip-belt and his fingers curled lightly around it. Glorfindel said nothing. It <i>had</i> been customary for the warriors of Lindon always to carry one, even at rest. Glorfindel, as Captain of Imladris, also did.</p><p>Tindómion put up his brows in interrogation. A challenge. Sweet and hot and tempting and just a little vicious. Glorfindel laughed softly, and gestured for them to go.</p><p>Fanari waited for them, calm and composed. Gil-galad had told Glorfindel how she had walked into the King’s Hall in Lindon to ask that her young son might serve the High King, giving his name and lineage without faltering, never blinking while those assembled stared and wondered and some looked askance at her. This meeting with Elrond, whom she had known since his childhood at Sirion, would hardly trouble her.</p><p>It was Elrond who seemed the more nervous, or perhaps wary, Glorfindel amended, as he greeted them in the wide, light room that looked out over the valley and the bridge. Long curtains rippled in the evening breeze and the air smelt of pine and lavender.</p><p>‘Tindómion, Fanari, I am so pleased to welcome you.’ Elrond rose from behind his great desk and came around it with hands held out. Fanari took them in her own, rose up to kiss his cheek and he pulled her into an embrace that Glorfindel knew was genuine. Then he turned to her son.</p><p>Tindómion’s eyes were silver ice.<br/>
‘I cannot serve thee, Elrond Eärendilion.’ His rich bard’s voice, Maglor’s voice, was like a pronunciation of doom; words never to be broken. ‘I will pledge no allegiance to thee. But I will serve Imladris and its people with all my body and heart.’</p><p>‘I am lord of this place,’ Elrond reminded him, but not arrogantly, rather gently, as if he sought for Tindómion’s understanding. ‘All those who serve Imladris as warriors must swear allegiance to me.’</p><p>‘No,’ Tindómion refused, no give in his tone. ‘And thine action — or inaction — in Mordor will lie between us forever. We have gained a respite, but no victory, as thou knowest. I will guard Imladris and those who dwell here, lay down my life for them, but it is <i>Glorfindel</i> I will serve.’</p><p>‘Do you think your father, your grandfather would have killed Isildur, and then gone to war against Gondor and Arnor?’ Elrond threw at him, stung and flushing. ‘For that is what would have happened, had I — or anyone — forced Isildur to destroy the One, or even give it up. It already held his mind.’</p><p>‘Yes. They would have,’ Glorfindel interposed before Tindómion, taking a swift step forward, could reply. ‘And I doubt they would have hesitated, either.’</p><p>‘I saw the sorrow in them, in Maglor and Maedhros, the guilt for their deeds.’ Elrond raised his voice, but Glorfindel’s head shook once.<br/>
‘I doubt it was for that. Yes, I am sure they carried some shame; they were not monsters, no matter what the ignorant may think and say. I have heard it often enough: <i>Bloody</i> Fëanorions, as a curse. But the sorrow would have been for their brothers, their father — for Fingon and Fingolfin. Thou didst not know them, Elrond, not truly, not as they were, not their love for their kin, and Eru above! not for Fëanor. They would have burned the world to get him back.’<br/>
<br/>
Tindómion’s head lifted at that as if he heard a call from afar off, ringing down the years, or from beyond Time.<br/>
<br/>
‘It was not the Silmarils that obsessed them,’ Glorfindel pursued, stern as judgement, absolutely certain of his words. ‘It was <i>Fëanor</i>. It was the everlasting grief for him and those they loved thou didst see in their eyes, Elrond. For Amrod and Amras, killed at Sirion, for Celegorm and Curufin and Caranthir in Doriath, for Fingon, dying under Gothmog’s axe, for Fingolfin, who met Morgoth and was broken by him.’</p><p>Tindómion gazed at him, silver eyes blazing. Fanari had bowed her head. When she lifted it, her face was strained, shadowed and her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.</p><p>‘And Maedhros...’ Glorfindel’s voice dropped like a stone into the past. ‘He was captive in Angband; he knew Sauron’s cruelties firsthand. To rid the world of the Dark Lord forever, would he <i>not</i> have taken and destroyed the One? Would <i>I</i> not, had I been there? My brother <i>died</i> in <i>Tol-in-Gaurhoth!</i> Sauron’s Isle. I felt him die!’ The room seemed to darken as if a cloud passed over the sun and the wind, for a moment, blew chill.<br/>
‘Thou didst not live through the First Age, Elrond,’ he ended. ‘Thou canst not know.’</p><p>Silence fell in the room like the dust of that Age, broken, glittering memories, diamond-precious, blood-dark. Glorfindel looked at Tindómion, the pride of him as he stood there, all Fëanorion intransigence and that dark, burning beauty.</p><p>It was Tindómion broke the tableau of quiet. Moving suddenly, swift and fluid, he drew his dagger, went down on one knee before Glorfindel and cut the blade across his palm.<br/>
‘Blood-oath, Prince Glorfindel Finarfinion. My service to thee.’</p><p>Glorfindel experienced a shock like a bared nerve. In Middle-earth some knew who he was, and tacitly ignored it: disowned son of Finarfin, preferring to remember him as Glorfindel of Gondolin, Lord of the House of the Golden Flower, who died at Cristhorn, and to call him that. But Tindómion gave him back his name.</p><p>Taking his own dagger, Glorfindel repeated the cut, clasped Tindómion’s hand and raised him. Their blood mingled, as did all the blood that flowed between them.</p><p>‘I accept thine allegiance, Tindómion Maglorion Fëanorion.’ Their eyes met, clashed and held. If Tindómion could name, so could Glorfindel, and just as true.  <i>Thou wilt accept thy birth and blood, my friend.</i><br/>
‘Allegiance, but not service,’ he said. ‘We fight as blood-kin.’</p><p>Long black lashes dropped over the silver eyes, then rose again.<br/>
‘As blood-kin,’ Tindómion repeated. ‘Until death takes us, or the High King comes again.’</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> OooOooO</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As is written elsewhere in my ‘verse, Glorfindel is the disowned son of Finarfin, next in age to Finrod.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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